


What we’ve broken

by DaaroMoltor



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:14:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28810944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaaroMoltor/pseuds/DaaroMoltor
Summary: Not all missions go as intended. If Napoleon were a better spy he would know this.
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 114





	What we’ve broken

**Author's Note:**

> This work was initially inspired by the song [Napoleon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwLXBCkgE6Y) by Bear's Den, particularly the [Paul Frith version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZm0xyeq3sA).

Napoleon sits in an off-white leather armchair, slouched back and legs spread wide, a glass of whiskey held by his fingertips along the rim.

For once, he is not smiling.

The American’s face is turned away, his eyes fixed in the direction of the window. It is clear that he is not seeing, though. Is clear that he is within _,_ and not with his surroundings. Bad practice for a spy, generally; dangerous. But Napoleon has been such for a long time now, not least of all evidenced by the fact that Illya is in his room. Sitting on his bed. He has not broken in; simply followed Napoleon through his door after the mission.

The mission…

Illya is a patriot. A spy. He follows orders.

Napoleon is not afflicted with such, Illya thinks. He is thief. Is bad spy.

This is why his eyes are not seeing and his jaw is tense.

It had not been a mission where it had been immediately obvious that these facts would become problematic. It had been ordinary, even, in as far as their missions ever could be said to be: a scientist pulled to the wrong side of a conflict. Bombs.

Napoleon, Gaby, and Illya had chased leads on the man across half of Europe, weaving in and out of their contacts and sources and networks to accomplish their task, finally centering on Istanbul. After that, it had taken them two more weeks in the city until they’d finally managed to find their way to an apartment in a semi-affluent part of town. They’d staked it out, confirmed that their target did indeed live there, and then he and Napoleon had entered.

The man could not be persuaded to cease his activities.

Napoleon had shot him.

This was reasonable, Illya judged. Their mission had not specified that the scientist should be brought alive, and extraction of willing participant was difficult enough in a city such as Istanbul. To attempt exiting the country with an _unwilling_ individual would certainly bring an even higher degree of unwanted attention.

And the man had certainly been unwilling.

Clearly ideologically aligned with the group he had allied himself with, the scientist had not appreciated their offer of rescue. A detonator had appeared. Threats of annihilation of a city block.

That Napoleon had pulled the trigger had truly only been remarkable in that Illya had not ‘ _beaten him to the punch’,_ as the American would have said. The shot itself was clean; the sharp crack of the silenced gun followed by the thump of the man collapsed to the ground. The bullet lodged in his brain.

The wail that had followed it had been… unexpected.

Illya closes his eyes briefly on the memory of it.

“ _Papa!”_

They had been peripherally aware that the man was married, naturally – a French woman. That there was a child. But these facts had never become relevant as they chased down their leads, and so it had not been at the forefront of their minds. And men did not usually bring their wives and children when they went to make dirty bombs for terrorist organization.

Not usually.

The child hardly reached Illya’s waist, had long dark hair, and she fell across her father’s body with a sound of such pure anguish that it hit Illya like a strike.

Both he and Napoleon had stood frozen as she flew past them, had stared mutely as she wailed.

Illya knows French and had understood what she had plead of her father:

_Wake up, daddy. Please, wake up. Do not leave me._

She did not look at them as she stroked her father's face, his hair; as her hands grew wet and dark with blood and brain matter.

They left her like that.

The sound of a silenced gun was not the soft _pop_ that the movies would have you believe; the neighbors would have been roused by it.

 _Papa!,_ echoed down the stairwell, accompanying the careful rush of their feet. _Papa!_

It was sloppy work, leaving the body as well as a witness. But Illya was on mission for U.N.C.L.E. now, not KGB. And Napoleon was always bad spy; it was natural that he would have no objection to sloppiness.

So they left.

Their escape was well planned, and the night kept their cover.

Gaby picked them up on a street corner, her hair in a cap, in a car that looked to be for driving western businessmen. Illya remembered having had the fleeting thought that it somehow seemed to match the suit Napoleon was wearing. 

“Only two tonight, gentlemen?” Gaby had asked, voice light, as they’d unhurriedly pulled opened the doors to the vehicle.

“Only two,” Illya had confirmed.

The muscles in Napoleon’s jaw had been dancing already, plucking steadily at Illya’s attention from the other side of the backseat.

Gaby was a clever woman and had asked no more questions.

At their hotel, Napoleon had been opening the car door and stepping outside before they’d even come to a full stop.

Gaby and he had watched his back as he strode purposefully into the hotel lobby.

“It got messy,” Illya had told Gaby after a moment. “Clean-up will be necessary.”

Gaby had glanced back at him. “Were you spotted?”

Illya had nodded once. “By his child.”

Gaby’s gaze had gone sharp.

“She is alive,” Illya had told her, and then stepped out of the car and after Napoleon.

Gaby would contact Waverly and inform him of the developments, deal with the aftermath.

Illya had caught up to Napoleon by the elevators. The arrow above it had just swept past the number three on its way down. After a moment’s wait, they had stepped inside and been alone. Then, they had stepped out, and the corridor had been empty. Napoleon had taken the key to his room out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket – the back of his hand no doubt brushing his holstered gun – and put it in the door. Turned. Left the door open behind him as he stepped through.

Illya had followed him before the mechanism mounted above could pull it shut. Had turned and locked the door and gone to draw the blinds; one was always too visible in a bright room in a dark night.

Napoleon had not looked at him once.

Had not said anything to him.

Had not smiled.

Still has not.

Illya studies the man’s face. His combed back hair, his stubbled jaw, his downturned lips. Half of it is in shadow and Napoleon does not usually look so dark.

Suddenly he lifts the glass, but stops short a couple of inches away from his mouth. His eyes do not move from the curtained window. He does not drink.

“Cowboy,” Illya says.

Napoleon’s jaw works, the shadow playing over the movement. He blinks, once. The hand holding the glass lowers again. When Napoleon’s eyes move to his it is with a deliberate sweep.

“Yes, Peril?” he asks, and his voice has shadows too.

Illya is good spy. He does not quite know what to say; can only help him hurt himself.

Napoleon turns away again.

“It is unfortunate, of course,” Napoleon says, after a moment, addressing the drawn curtains, “but this is the nature of our work. It had to be done.”

Napoleon has forgotten that they have not been having a conversation and has begun in the middle of it. Has begun from where his thoughts have left him off. His voice is unwavering and the words come easy, just the right side of callous; the perfect impression of a man that knows the need to express condolences – but does not mean them.

But Napoleon is still within and the shadows dance across his face.

Illya watches the performance in silence.

“Intervention was necessary,” Napoleon continues. “And he brought the consequences down upon himself. Better us, and that we did it cleanly, than someone else.” 

These are tired lines that Napoleon recites, Illya thinks, and he wonders if he manages to mean them.

“Yes,” he agrees, because they are true, no matter how tired.

But Napoleon is bad spy.

He stands up abruptly. “I need a shower.”

Illya follows him with his eyes as he goes, and thinks of small hands covered in blood. Thinks of larger hands, covered in blood.

The door clicks shut. Napoleon has forgotten to tell him to leave.

It would have been better, Illya thinks, if he had been the one to pull the trigger.

Then he changes his mind, and thinks that it would not have mattered at all; Napoleon is bad spy, and he will blame himself always.

The faucet runs. The shower starts. A cabinet opens and closes. The high sound of glass splintering and the pitter of shards raining against tile.

Illya stands and walks over to the bathroom door. Opens it without knocking.

He is no stranger to destroying things out of anger.

Napoleon has stripped out of shirt and holster and undershirt, pulled his belt open. The shower is hot enough that steam is billowing as the water pounds down into the tub below. Shards of him are reflected, scattered and strewn across the bathroom floor, and already there are drops of angry red splattered among it all.

Illya is wearing shoes and so steps inside, past Napoleon, and reaches into the shower. Turns the water off. His shirt clings wetly to his forearm, gone mostly transparent. He turns back.

Napoleon is examining the wide gash across his knuckles. The blood is beading and gathering, dripping. Illya walks past him again, out into the main room, goes to the corner by the bed where Napoleon always puts his suitcase, and pulls out the well-used first-aid kit he keeps in one of the side compartments. Then he goes back into the bathroom, clears a small path with the tip of his shoe, and sits Napoleon down on the edge of the bathtub. He sits down beside him. 

Napoleon is staring at his blood-covered hand.

“Useless American,” Illya says, taking his hand in his own and lifting it. “Losing fight against mirror.”

He plucks slivers out of the wound with tweezers and wishes that there was a way he could do the same for the one that is truly hurting.

His thoughts surprise him, then. But Illya is not Napoleon; he is not within, but without.

 _Without_ …

He does not linger on it.

“What a gentle giant,” Napoleon mocks, but he does not manage to get the right twist to the words.

Illya’s eyes flick up to his briefly. “I am not gentle, Cowboy. You know this.”

Illya is not teasing; he is reminding.

“That almost sounds like a promise, Peril.”

Illya’s cheeks color, because Napoleon’s barbs of homosexuality always get under his skin, even when he has grown used and resistant to all the others; the reason for their frequent deployment, no doubt. He is unwilling to engage in the distraction, however.

“You cannot be gentle,” he says. “It is better if you stop trying.”

Another reminder.

Napoleon’s American smile slips from his face and anger flashes in his eyes. His hand disappears from Illya’s careful hold and he stands.

“If it was sanctimonious lectures I was in need of, I would have stayed with the CIA,” he snaps.

“I am not sanctimonious,” Illya retorts calmly. “I am right.”

Napoleon barks a short laugh, his words acid: “You’re incredible.”

“You are wallowing,” Illya says, because it is true.

Napoleon’s face is a storm, all facades blown over. “I _shot_ her _father_!”

“We shot the bomb maker for terrorist organization,” Illya amends. “Threatening to blow up entire street.”

Napoleon’s jaw is clenched.

Illa continues: “Many mothers and fathers would have lived on that street. Many children.”

Illya sees the flash of the answer in Napoleon’s eyes:

_But it would not have been me pulling the trigger._

It is a very selfish thought, and Napoleon knows it. Illya knows it. Knows it intimately. It stirs something oddly like nostalgia in him to see it; to see Napoleon so preoccupied with being _good_ that he fails at being good _spy_. Nostalgia… Longing.

Had Illya truly been this way once?

Or had he simply been the man offering condolences he knew was expected?

Napoleon has the thought of a good man and, as a good man, he suffers from having had it. And Illya thinks that Napoleon knows that he saw him have it and wonders where this will bring them.

Because Napoleon will be ashamed, and this will make him angry.

He needs not wonder long.

Napoleon shoves his hands in the center of Illya’s chest. Illya allows it, tucks his head so that it will not crack too sharply against the tile behind him; falls backward into the stupidly large American bathtub. American, even though they are in Turkey.

Napoleon climbs in after. The floor of it is wet from earlier and it soaks Illya’s clothes. Napoleon’s knee is in his stomach, and he tenses it to keep him from sinking in too deep.

“Is it all _that_ easy for you!?” Napoleon snarls, teeth bared, fists curled around Illya’s collar. “Huh? That easy to justify that we have left that _child_ without her father?!”

Illya meets his eyes evenly and says, simply: “Yes.”

Napoleon is so angry that Illya thinks that he will punch him in the face. This will surely hurt – perhaps both of them, with the state of Napoleon’s hand – but he thinks that it might ultimately will be for good; might drain the conflict. He will allow it.

But then the fury is usurped by some form of outraged bewilderment, perhaps in the face of Illya’s utter passivity. Then that wanes too, until Napoleon’s hands loosen on his lapels as he stares down at him. Then Napoleon scoffs, moves his knee from Illya’s stomach to his side; sits straddling his lap.

It is a brief storm, Napoleon’s anger, Illya thinks. A spike and then done. Not like his own, which is like a Russian winter, always holding on until the last.

Napoleon tilts his head back. The soft ‘ _Bloody Russians’_ is addressed to the ceiling. Weary and… fond? Illya looks up at Napoleon, his bare chest, and endures his presence on top of him. Then Napoleon finally looks down at him, and Illya can’t read the look on his face.

Then, quick as a snake, Napoleon’s hand darts out and twists the tap back on.

Illya flinches as the water hits him; the first cold spurt before the warmth has built up. It sinks through to his skin immediately, but it is chased away shortly by comparatively scalding heat.

He waits until he is used to it all before he finally asks: “What was this for?”

“Surely you must suffer in some way for our sins,” Napoleon replies; a statement that could have been meant seriously, but there is an upturn in the corner of his mouth and so it isn’t. Isn’t wholly, at least.

“If your conscience won’t plague you, Peril, I guess I will,” Napoleon adds, reaching out and turning off the water despite his words.

Illya tsks.

“American speaking of conscience,” he scoffs, contemptuously, because this is their script.

His eyes have caught on Napoleon’s collarbones, the breadth of his shoulders. This is not part of the script.

He catches himself, and thinks it must have been in time because Napoleon continues his role:

“Oh?” he says, leaning forward slightly and tilting his head to the side mockingly. “And a Russian is a much better option then?”

“Values things good for the community,” Illya confirms. “Not just individual. Makes for better-developed morals.”

“Is the community not made up of individuals?” counters Napoleon.

Illya hears the words and understands their meaning, but he feels as though the conversation is now suddenly about other things than the words they are saying. Napoleon’s eyes are sparkling dangerously. Illya puts one hand on his hip to stop him from leaning any further forwards.

His skin feels almost scorchingly hot underneath his palm, and it brings his attention to how the heat has drained out of the water.

“I will not waste my time debating politics with you,” Illya says. “Let me up. You have made me cold and wet.”

Napoleon’s grin is like the Cheshire cat’s.

“You know, people underneath me usually do not usually _complain_ about the fact that I’ve made them wet.”

Irritation flares through Illya’s chest. “And do you usually use showers to make them so?”

Napoleon’s eyes are dancing as he replies. “Oh, you’ve _always_ been an exception for me, Peril,”

Illya decides that this is enough. The cowboy is clearly cheered enough from his stupor to annoy him, and Illya has done more than what is necessary for his partner. He is profoundly uncomfortable now, he realizes. Napoleon too heavy in his lap, the porcelain cold and hard against his shoulder blades. It’s too short, too, the tub; it forces him to bend his legs up, like a backrest for Napoleon to indulgently lounge back against.

The thought surges hotly through him. 

“Get off, Cowboy,” Illya snaps, patience abruptly worn thin.

The American’s smirk is a small thing, this time, a soft upturn as he gazes down at him through half-lidded eyes.

Illya takes it for the warning that it is and tenses up.

“Why don’t you give me a chance to live up to that nickname you’ve given me,” Napoleon says, voice smooth and low, “and buck for me?”

He grinds down the barest amount as he says it – little enough that it could have been a mistake, had it been anyone else. Then he leans forward further, despite that Illya’s hand on his hip there to prevent this very thing.

“Let me see if I can handle riding you?”

Illya _does_ buck up, then; throws the outrageous American out of the tub and gets to his feet in it.

Napoleon sits, half-naked in the mess of mirror-shards and his own blood, and laughs in delight.

Shame burns hot through Illya, and the fierceness of the emotion catches him unawares for a moment. But then he decides that, yes, it is proper. It _is_ a shameful thing, this disgusting thing Napoleon so distastefully makes jokes about, and so it is right that he should feel shame to hear them. _Someone_ should, and Illya has long since abandoned any hope of finding any sense of what is decent in his American partner.

 _Incorrigible_ is the word that comes to him, staring down at Napoleon sitting laughing on the floor beside the toilet, and so he tells it to him: “You are incorrigible.”

Napoleon laughs again, then, and looks up at him with a wide smile: “Why, thank you, Peril.”

Other words he could have said come to Illya then, but these are uncomfortable. Unsuited to Napoleon; he does not say these aloud.

He is still wearing shoes, so he steps out of the tub, water dripping from his clothes and onto Napoleon as he does so. The glass crunches underneath the soles of his shoes, and he does not think about how it will feel underneath the bare soles of Napoleon’s feet.

Uselessly, he straightens his tie and combs his fingers through his hair. The hallway had been empty when they came inside; it is late, and he will simply have to hope that it has remained so.

He’s mentally sorting through what dry remark he could use to imply a comically thwarted attempted dalliance to any stranger encountered in the hallways, when Napoleon-

“Wait, wait, you great piece of humor-devoid Russian marble,” he says, getting to his feet among the debris. “Don’t go out into the hallway like that – I’m sure I have some shirt that will stretch to fit your oversized proportions.”

Illya, despite himself, does wait.

Shards seem to have embedded themselves in the skin of his back when Napoleon had landed on the floor, but then he shifts his shoulders and most patter to the floor. Most. Still he shoots a smile at him, stepping carefully through the room on his toes, as though it is not Illya’s fault that his back glitters as he walks by.

Napoleon drips, too, the water caught soundlessly by the thick carpet.

“Just hang on a moment, I think I have an undershirt that I’ll keep you decent enough through your elevator ride.”

Napoleon is not quite so wet as him, with his bare torso, but his pants still stick to his skin in places. Illya begins undoing his shirt, the buttons catching and squeaking unpleasantly against the wet fabric.

Napoleon straightens and throws him a white t-shirt.

“Your pants are black,” he says, after a quick, evaluating glance. “If you squeeze some water out of them, you could probably squeak by without drawing too much attention to yourself. Or do you want me to dig up a pair of running shorts for you?”

“This is fine,” Illya says tightly; he does not want Cowboys silly little running pants.

(He feels uncovered enough as it is.)

Napoleon nods, turns his back to him and unbuttons his pants and pulls them down. There’s a squelching sound as he does, and they stick, and he has to force each leg individually down with the help of his hands.

His underwear is white and wet and it’s like it’s not even there at all.

Napoleon straightens.

Illya can’t move.

“Peril?” Napoleon asks, glancing over his shoulder, likely because there has been no sound of Illya undressing.

He does not reply, and Napoleon’s brows draw together.

“Peril?” he repeats.

There’s a drop of water running down Napoleon’s neck, down into the hair dusting his right pectoral. And Illya realizes with a sinking sense of finality that he wants to lick it.

Lick _him._

He can’t stop staring.

“Dear God,” Napoleon breathes, and Illya might just have pulled his gun and shot him on the spot if there’d been a single trace of mocking in it.

Instead there’s just shock. Disbelief.

It is bad enough.

Illya turns to leave, Napoleon’s t-shirt clenched in his hand.

He makes it all the way to the door before his arm is grabbed and he’s slammed against the wall. His thoughts are like a waterfall, pounding down over him in a torrent, and among it all is the wonder of whether Napoleon will punch him. Whether he _should_ punch him. Whether Illya should draw his gun and shoot him now that he knows what the man is capable of evoking in him.

Whether he should draw his gun and shoot _himself,_ now that he knows what is in him to be evoked.

He does nothing, though. Simply stares.

Napoleon stares back, looking staggered.

He opens his mouth, but then seconds tick by in silence. Illya spots the moment doubt starts to creep in, the moment the American starts questioning his interpretation of what he had seen. It is a chance Illya had assumed he would not have – not with this man, so used to reading want writ large upon the face of every woman he meets; surely he would find it unmistakeable even worn on different features?

But, nevertheless, here it is, laid out in front of him.

And Illya does not know how to grasp it.

Is too busy drowning under the weight of his realizations.

It almost seems to resolve itself, though, because Napoleon’s hand drops from where he’d grabbed his arm and he steps back, a frown creasing his brow.

Illya lunges forward and kisses him. He kisses him because he desperately wants to feel how it feels before it’s too late, because he should be shot _,_ he should shoot himself, _someone_ should shoot him-

Napoleon’s chin and cheeks and upper lip are stubbled and it tears like sandpaper against him and it feels _right_ that this should hurt, should be hard, should be punishing but- his lips are soft and slack with surprise and _they_ are warm and taste like any skin Illya has tasted before and the curl in his gut is _not_ disgust.

It’s… not.

Illya wrenches away, as though he is the one who had been forcibly grabbed and kissed. He has dropped the shirt at some point and he does not know when; his palms both burn with the phantom sensation of Napoleon’s naked skin beneath them.

The profundity of his mistake stares back at him. His partner. His _American_ partner, on loan to this absurd and idealistic joke of an organization.

Говно, his _friend._

Napoleon stands in front of him, all but naked, and Illya has just put his mouth to his.

He abruptly feels as though he is about to throw up and it’s far too late.

Both of them are panting.

Napoleon is wide-eyed.

“I-…” Napoleon says and trails off.

Illya thinks this might be the first time he’s seen him at a genuine loss for words.

“May I leave now?” Illya asks, putting as much bite into the words as he is able.

The Russian accent is good for this, he thinks. Napoleon, at least, looks struck, so he must have managed decently.

“ _Leave?”_ Napoleon asks, outraged, disbelieving. “Like hell you’re _leaving,_ Peril!”

“Then what will you do?” Illya asks, voice flat. “Shoot me?”

Napoleon rears back, blinking.

“ _Shoot_ you?” he asks, like he does not know what the word means.

“Shoot me,” Illya repeats impatiently.

Napoleon’s gun is still in its holster hanging in the bathroom, so Illya draws his own, grabs it by the barrel and puts it in Napoleon’s hand. Points it at himself.

Napoleon stares at the weapon with an open mouth.

“Will you?” Illya prompts.

Napoleon’s face snaps up to gape at him, at that. “Jesus Christ, Illya, are you actually _asking_ me to?”

Illya shrugs.

Napoleon looks at him like he has lost his mind. A fair assessment, perhaps, considering what he has just done. He sees something mounting in Napoleon’s eyes, but does not know what it is.

He waits.

Then Napoleon throws the gun carelessly aside, saying “No, I am not going to fucking _shoot you,_ you bloody Russian-“

Then he drags him close and kisses him.

It is Illya’s turn to be stunned. He’s struck by the urge to halt him, to explain to Cowboy that this is no longer joking, that Illya is broken and have been struck too deep by his jeers. That Illya has perverted his taunts and is perverting this as well. But of course this is absurd; of course even Napoleon Solo would not _kiss_ someone as a jest – a _man._ Because kissing is what they are doing, even though Illya can’t seem to pair the action with the word. Can’t pair the sensation of it with the reprehensibility he knows it deserves.

Napoleon’s tongue touches his.

Illya has kissed before (of course he has kissed before), but suddenly he is at a loss of how to do it. It is dance, and like dance, it requires a man to lead and a woman to follow. Illya is kissing a man.

Illya is kissing a man.

Illya is kissing Napoleon Solo.

Cowboy.

Who seems to have picked up on Illya’s indecision and decided that it needs to be rectified: He grasps Illya’s head with both hands and angles him the way he wants him, pushes him into the wall and forces him to bend to reach.

Illya has never had to bend this little to reach someone’s lips.

And Napoleon's chest is firm and muscled, the hands holding his face in place are broad and strong, his waist under Illya’s hands straight. Even the _scent_ of him is powerfully _different_. Intoxicating.

Illya breaks and decides that kissing does not have to be dance; that it can be fight.

Napoleon moans into his mouth and his hands shift to his shoulders and waist.

Illya has never kissed like this. It is violent and forceful and unyielding, Napoleon's stubble catching on the beginnings of his own. It stings and makes it sweeter and Napoleon tastes of whiskey and blood, and Illya keeps wanting more. Keeps _taking_ more. Napoleon allows, _gives,_ meets him at every turn. It feels like fighting, but only the way fighting feels with Napoleon.

It feels so good that the worries that he is being tricked, somehow, but cannot bring himself to care.

Then Napoleon surges close, his whole body dragging against Illya’s own, and the fact that Illya is hard is suddenly unmistakable. For both of them. Before Illya has time to process the development, Napoleon is pressing against him again, gasping out: “Yes, Illya, _fuck…”_

Napoleon’s voice like this goes to Illya’s head and he pushes back just as fiercely. Can feel an answering hardness against his thigh, and his whole body is burning, craving, taking. He can’t hold him close enough, can’t get enough friction.

And then suddenly Napoleon is withdrawing.

Illya growls at this before he can think better of it, but Napoleon just smirks at him. Sinks to his knees in front of him, a seductive smile turning his lips.

Then they part and close hotly over his wet pants and the head of his-

Illya shoves him off. Hard.

Napoleon has instincts enough to catch himself, sprawling backward, his smirk replaced by a glare and a furious downturn of his mouth. Illya hauls him to his feet and slams him into the wall. Napoleon struggles against him for a moment, angry, but then Illya goes to his knees and Napoleon's entire body goes slack; surprise. Or something else.

“Jesus _Christ,”_ Napoleon says as Illya tears down the _stupid_ wet and transparent excuse for underwear and swallows him down.

“Oh- _fuck,”_ Napoleon chokes, threading fingers through Illya’s hair and holding on hard.

Napoleon had not been fully hard – softened from the push, perhaps, or perhaps simply never having reached the point of it earlier – but now he stiffens so fast in his mouth that Illya chokes on it. The sensation of it goes to his head, making it spin, making him feel like he’s going to drown, and he moans. It’s full and heavy and _hot_ and-

This thing between men, he had known would be different. But not like this. Not for the heat of it to burn, to _sear._

Fully hard, the length of him is too much to take entirely, and he has to back off or risk gagging. He _wants,_ though, and has had long training of pushing the limits of his body. On his fourth focused attempt, he manages to swallow Napoleon down to the root, pushes his nose against his pelvis and the coarse hairs that grow there.

From above he hears Napoleon’s breath coming raggedly.

Illya does not move, does not want to; wants the sensation of his air being cut off, the fullness, the taste, the _scent._ Bringing pleasure to Napoleon is an unintended side effect, at most.

What he is doing strikes him suddenly, profoundly. That invective, that condemnation present in nearly every language he knows: Illya is sucking cock.

Instead of the disgust he expects to follow, his own cock throbs almost painfully in his wet pants, and he has to pull off Napoleon to let out a moan.

Napoleon's legs are trembling. Illya can feel this because he is holding the man’s thighs in his hands to keep him still and in place.

He goes in again to swallow him back down, but suddenly Napoleon’s hands close hard down on his hair and hold him back. Illya bares his teeth in frustration and glares up at Napoleon.

His look falters somewhat at the sight of him, though, now entirely naked. His chest is heaving and his face is flushed, his eyes closed. Illya is surprised to see it, because he is under no delusions that Napoleon is anything but exceptionally experienced in these matters; surely at least most of the women he beds are more practiced and proficient at the task Illya has now undertaken?

Heat curls through him at the sight, nevertheless, despite his earlier myopic focus on his own enjoyment.

After a moment of stillness, Napoleon opens his eyes and looks down at him. He is wearing a smile, but Illya thinks that it has not come out the way Napoleon has intended it to.

“Slow _down,_ Peril,” he says, strain plain to hear in the words beneath the easy affability, and Illya thinks that this is not as Cowboy has intended either. “Or this is about to become very embarrassing for me.”

Illya’s eyebrows twitch together, the warning giving him pause; he is not certain that he wants this to end so soon – that he wants it to end before he has sampled the breadth of this thing that will not be offered him again.

He hums to indicate his acknowledgment, holds Napoleon’s eye for a moment, and then closes in more slowly than before. Napoleon allows this without resistance.

Illya moves more leisurely this time. Works methodically. Licks and tastes and sucks, allows a careful scrape of his teeth.

Napoleon laughs breathlessly above him. “Of course this is how you-… of _course_ you-…”

His hold on Illya’s hair appears to fill the function of steadying himself, rather than guiding Illya, and he leans heavily back against the wall.

Napoleon allows Illya to continue until his knees have gone numb against the carpet and his jaw aches; until Napoleon’s gasps have turned to clipped whines, until his jaw is pressed shut so hard that his teeth gnash, until his cock twitches if Illya so much as breathes differently in the direction of it.

Then Napoleon draws him up to his feet. For a moment he only looks at him, their faces a mere inch apart. Illya stares back, feels his legs sting with the returning circulation, and wonders if Napoleon can smell himself on Illya’s breath. There is no longer any point in embarrassment; Illya waits to see what will be done to him.

“ _Christ,”_ Napoleon curses, then kisses him.

His hands grip Illya’s short hair so hard that it hurts, now; pulls, shoves, drags, twists. There is something relentless in his kisses, now, unyielding. His wet cock pushes against Illya’s stomach insistently and it tears at his attention. His jaw is aching and his throat is sore, and yet he wants it back into his mouth once more.

Napoleon’s body is pressed flushed against his, and it is not until Napoleon tears his lips away just long enough to breathe out “ _Bed,”_ that he realizes it is in an attempt to move him back. He relents, and Napoleon maneuvers them across the room, falls back onto the bed, drags Illya down on top of him. Rolls them over.

The soft material beneath him, Napoleon’s weight on top; for a moment taking it to the bed feels like taking it too far. Illya’s perversion does not deserve clean sheets and a comfortable mattress; makes a mockery of real lovemaking and defiles the space where it takes place.

But Napoleon kisses him like he is going to devour him and Illya _wants._ Wants so much that he cannot possibly begin to resist.

He is dizzy with it and Napoleon uses it to dominate their kiss.

But then the want turns into craving and Illya cannot wait. Turns it, takes control, rolls them over yet again so that he is on top, kisses until his mouth aches in new ways. Then he tears off and moves; the corner of his mouth, the sharp turn of his jaw, closes his teeth over his earlobe. Then Illya traces the path of the water droplet he had seen earlier with his tongue, with his teeth. Licks and bites and tastes until his mouth feel full of Napoleon once more, different though it is from before. Napoleon does not seem to mind, moans under him, claws blunt nails into his back. In the corner of his eye, Illya sees the muscle of his jaw dance.

It’s a heady sensation, and he savors it. Buries his hand in Napoleon's hair to be able to twist his head as he needs to explore every inch of his neck. Scratches his tongue on the stubble above his Adam’s apple, tastes the divot between his collarbones, bites down _hard_ just where his neck turns to shoulder.

Napoleon grabs Illya’s hands, guides him down to grabs his ass, spreads his legs invitingly to allow Illya to fall between them and-

“No.” Illya tears himself away.

Then he flips them, turns over with Napoleon draped over him, and bucks upwards in unspoken demand.

Napoleon’s mouth has ended up just by his ear, and it’s impossible to miss the hitch in his breath as his hips stutter downward to meet Illya’s movement. Then Napoleon’s mouth closes on the junction between neck and shoulder, and teeth dig deep into skin in the same spot Illya had just bitten him. Illya groans deep, vision swimming, bucking up again to seek friction.

“Jesus _Christ,”_ Napoleon says, breaking off, voice rough, “you don’t do anything by halves, do you?”

Napoleon has been restraining himself, Illya realizes suddenly, hearing him. He has been quiet and gritted his teeth and kept still, and Illya does not know why.

He will not think on it now, however.

“What would be the point?” he asks – answers – and he is not certain if he means it as a joke or if he is deadly serious, but Cowboy laughs.

Of course he laughs.

Illya allows his head to fall forward, resting his head against the pillow, and endures the almost nauseatingly tight and hot curl in his stomach.

Napoleon fills his mouth with other things than laughter, then. Kisses and sucks on Illya’s neck until he thinks there will be bruises, until there _must_ be bruises. Gets his hand underneath Illya and manages to unbutton the last buttons on his shirt without ever truly moving off of him. He pulls it off in a shock of cold, Illya’s damp skin suddenly exposed to the air. The undershirt comes off, too, but getting it there takes several minutes as Napoleon chases the hem up along Illya’s spine with his tongue.

When it’s finally wrenched over his head, Illya is panting and trembling and his cock is aching, pressed against the fly of his pants. Napoleon's hands are everywhere; running up his arms, catching in his hair, pressing his wrists to the bed, dragging across the shallow divots between his ribs. Slipping beneath the hem of his pants and his underwear and, wider than any hand that has touched Illya like this before, _kneading_ his ass in a firm grip. The sensation of it is exacerbated until it’s nearly unbearable by Napoleon’s teeth closing down _hard_ on his neck, just below the line of his hair.

“ _Off,_ ” Illya demands finally, hoarse, pushing himself down against the sheets.

Napoleon disappears so instantaneously that it leaves Illya feeling disoriented.

He blinks and turns, and finds Napoleon sitting on the other side of the bed with a wary look in his eyes.

Illya presses his eyes shut and his forehead to the pillow in frustration for a moment. Then he flips to his back and tears the buttons of his fly open.

The incredible relief of it mitigates the sound of his frustration somewhat as he growls out: “My _pants,_ Cowboy. Not you.”

He has to close his eyes then, because without the pain of the buttons digging into him, the pleasure is almost overwhelming. He has to simply lay still for a few moments to ensure that it will not crest.

Then suddenly there is a finger dragging up the length of him, separated from direct contact only by the thin layer of fabric of his underwear, and he is too unprepared to have any chance of tempering the moan that tears out of him. Tears out from the _depths_ of him; for a moment he thinks that he will come from this touch alone, colors dancing in front of his eyes and a roaring rush in his ears.

He breathes harshly until it subsides.

He opens his eyes to glare at Napoleon. “Did I say you could touch?”

He says it perhaps too harshly, because Napoleon snatches back his hovering hand as though burnt.

Illya catalogs the reaction and then says: “Help me out of these pants. It is your fault that they are wet.”

It is an indirect attempt at smoothing over his words. Perhaps too indirect.

Napoleon hesitates only a moment before he does as asked, first darting down to pull off his shoes, then standing on his knees and moving so that one is on either side of Illya. Grabs a fistful of fabric on each side of his hips. Illya notes that Napoleon does not touch his skin as he helps Illya peel the wet pants off his legs.

Illya is left only in his damp underwear, propped up on an elbow.

Napoleon sits back on his haunches and stares down at him.

Illya wonders if the look on his face is something he is aware of. If it is something that is deliberate. If it is something that is calculated. If Napoleon is under the illusion that Illya needs to be flattered in the same way that Napoleon no doubt does to the women he takes to his bed.

The idea that he is being subjected to a part of the performance that is Napoleon Solo’s seduction regimen irks him and prickles uncomfortably underneath his skin. Yet he allows Cowboy to stare his fill. Waits him out.

(He does not know what there is for Napoleon to stare at; he is a man, and has an uncompromisingly masculine body.)

Finally, their eyes meet.

“Can I-…?” Napoleon trails off, leaving the question unspecified.

Illya frowns at him. “Yes.”

Napoleon’s eyes snap to his face.

“Are you sure?”

He sounds skeptical.

Illya had not anticipated that Cowboy would respond so strongly to rebuke earlier (he never has in any other situation, after all, no matter how sternly delivered) and wonders if the reason behind this is the same as what had made Napoleon hold back before. Either way, he finds himself impatient and annoyed with himself for having caused unnecessary delay.

“Yes,” he grits out. “Whatever you ask, I am sure. If there is something I do not like, you will know. I am not some wilting- _ah!”_

A small smirk has crept up on Napoleon’s face, and heat pools in Illya’s stomach at the sight of it.

“Trust me,” Napoleon says, Illya’s cock firmly grasped in his hand. “I am perfectly aware that you are in no way _wilting.”_

He squeezes down even harder, and Illya is struck mute by the sensation, eyelids fluttering closed. But then Napoleon eases off, backs down, as though he’s suddenly doubting his welcome. Illya’s hand shoots down before Napoleon can ease off completely, squeezes his hand around his length, and the back of Napoleon’s hand is tacky with half-dry blood from earlier.

It seems to glue them together and Illya clenches his jaw so hard that he hears it creak.

He has to snatch his hand away.

“Do not touch,” he grits out again, and Napoleon’s hand disappear instantaneously. A moment later, Illya manages to open his eyes and continue: “It is too good. I do not wish to come already.”

“Oh,” Napoleon says, a pleased smile appearing on his lips. “You could have just said so; I thought you perhaps had started to have second thoughts.”

Illya frowns at Napoleon, because the man has certainly never appeared the slightest bit insecure in his desirability before; the notion that he would be is practically absurd, with his appearance being what it is.

Then Napoleon drapes himself across him again, presses his member into the junction between Illya’s thigh and his pelvis, his mouth latching onto his neck once more. And Illya realizes that Napoleon had not meant himself specifically _,_ but rather referred to the fact of him being another man.

And this is also absurd, Illya thinks; he is far too deep into wanting to have any doubts. Napoleon has always been bad for his sense of self-preservation.

“No second thoughts,” he growls, grabbing Napoleon's head and bringing him up for a kiss.

It is important that Napoleon knows this, because Illya wants no hesitance, no carefulness, no delicacy.

“I have told you what I want,” Illya reminds him.

“Have you, now?” Napoleon asks, between their kisses, and Illya cannot say whether the question is meant genuinely or as a means to draw the words from him. “Tell me again, then.”

“I want you to-…”

He _does_ want it, but it appears that wanting is easier than saying.

He gets his arm between their bodies, closes his hand around Napoleon’s cock.

“I want _you,”_ he pushes out between their lips, squeezing his hand as he does to emphasize in exactly what manner he means.

Napoleon groans against his mouth, tilting his head forward until their foreheads touch. “You’ll be the death of me, Peril.” 

“If you do not hurry up, then, yes, I will,” Illya agrees, biting down hard on Napoleon’s lower lip.

It earns him a laugh, and then he suddenly finds himself flipped to his stomach and Napoleon’s hand pushing him deep against the mattress.

“Allow me to _hurry up,_ then,” Napoleon whispers in his ear.

Then he is leaning over him, reaching for the drawer to his bedside table. From it, he draws the small bottle of massage oil, stamped with the hotel logo, that Illya recognizes from the small basket of toiletries in his own room.

It is open, about a third missing.

Before Illya has time to comb through his memories to figure out when Napoleon last had had a woman for nightly company, he says, voice velvety and quiet by his ear: “This is a great addition when you have need to take care of yourself, don’t you think?”

The picture of Napoleon spread on this very bed, cock hard and glistening in his hand, shoots through Illya’s mind like fire.

“I would not know,” Illya says, still half-delirious with the image floating in his mind’s eye.

“You wouldn’t-“ Napoleon withdraws abruptly. “Really, Peril, I know you are a communist, but there is no need to be _ascetic._ It is _free_ for heaven's sake!”

Illya lifts his head and glances back at him.

“I share room with Gaby,” he points out.

Napoleon subsides slightly. “Oh. Right.”

Illya puts his face back against the pillow, already in disbelief of what he is about to say. It sounds – even in his head – like something Napoleon would say to one of his women, and most definitely not like something that will sound remotely reasonable or seductive coming out of Illya’s mouth. But he says it anyway:

“You will have to show me how to use it, Cowboy.”

Complete silence meets his words.

But then, even as Illya is bracing himself to handle incredulous laughter, Napoleon moans against his shoulder.

“Oh, don’t you worry, Peril,” he breathes. “I _will_.”

Napoleon stays true to his word.

He has Peril stay on his stomach, but draw up a knee at his side. This lifts him ever so slightly off of the bed – maddeningly so – and spreads him in a way that is so obscene that Illya can feel the heat coming off his face. He keeps it in the pillow, though, so that Napoleon will not see.

Once placed, Napoleon pours what feels like an overly generous amount in the hollow at the small of Illya’s back. Illya growls at this, annoyed at the diversion from what he has asked for, but Napoleon silences him when he runs his fingers through the shallow pool. The touch is unexpected and Illya does not manage to stop his hips from lifting, seeking further contact.

His face _burns_ at that, at the wantonness, at the depravity in longing for such a thing so profoundly, but-… he does. And he will not stop Napoleon now.

The shame burns even fiercer as Napoleon’s finger dip down in the cleft of his cheeks, but then it is swallowed by a torrent of something else entirely when a finger suddenly brushes past Illya’s hole.

The sound that escapes him sounds almost like something he would make taking a punch, even to his own ears; a short, sharp, huffed out, exhale.

Napoleon stills.

Illya endures it for two seconds before shifting his hips to wordlessly demand him to continue.

Napoleon does.

It is the start of a maddening torture. Illya has never experienced the like, somehow completely different from someone stroking his cock. Napoleon’s slick finger circles around and around, still only outside, but it feels as though it is pushing at his very _soul,_ at the center of his very being, hopelessly inescapable and nearly impossible to endure. He wants more, _more,_ and his breath wants to come out like sobs. He pushes his face deep into the pillow, clenches his hands in the sheets until his knuckles are white, to escape this indignity.

Then Napoleon’s finger suddenly slips inside.

Illya has been trembling to have this for what feels like hours, but abruptly it is too much.

He does not like it.

He frowns into the pillow and lays completely still.

“You need to relax,” Napoleon urges quietly, pressing his lips to his back.

Some of Illya’s escaped arousal returns at the sound of Napoleon’s voice, scratched and raw.

The act that he had so desperately wanted seems suddenly now appealing only because of what it will allow him to do to Napoleon. But he does as he has been told.

Illya knows how to relax his body; it is an essential skill in fighting and has been useful several times when he has found himself tied up. He takes a deep breath, and then…

_Releases._

With Napoleon’s finger inside him, the relevant musculature becomes immediately obvious.

“Yes, like that,” Napoleon needlessly encourages.

It is not good, but… it is no longer bad, either.

He lays still and _feels_ it. The wet slip and slide of Napoleon’s finger. The odd _wrongness_ of the intrusion that seems concentrated somewhere in his stomach. Napoleon’s breath against his back. The thump of his own heart that seems to make the whole mattress jump with each beat in the stillness.

Then the _idea_ of it suddenly catches a spark within him again, more so than the act itself. Of having Napoleon doing this to him. Of _allowing_ Napoleon to do this to him.

Then suddenly Napoleon’s knuckle catches against his rim and it startles a moan from him, his insides white-hot for a moment.

“I am continuing because you told me that you would let me know if I was doing something that you didn’t like,” Napoleon says, voice breathy and teasing.

“You would not miss it,” Illya growls threateningly, not bothering to lift more than his mouth from the pillow.

“So does that mean that you like _this?”_ Napoleon asks, and pushes his finger in as deep as it will go.

Illya’s stomach feels as though it drops out, his head spinning. There is no doubt this time: Napoleon questions because he wants to hear Illya admit it.

“Peril?” Napoleon asks, draws his finger out, and then pushes it in again.

Napoleon sounds almost entirely unaffected by their activities, his voice nigh patronizing, the prompting like it is nothing more than idle curiosity. For some reason, this coils Illya’s insides even tighter; his long-held and simmering envy at Napoleon’s ever-present cool in situations that make his own blood boil finally resolving into something _else_.

“ _Yes,”_ the word is practically punched out of him. “Yes, Cowboy, I like it.”

“Good,” Napoleon says, almost perfunctory, and then the tips of two fingers are inside Illya.

He sucks in a breath, because it _stings_ , the wrongness twisting through him again, but before it has time to linger, Napoleon asks again: “And do you like this?”

Illya cannot say why, but he has to breathe through the heady rush the question brings.

“Yes,” he says, despite the discomfort, because he _does,_ because it is as though something within him has suddenly found something beyond the pain and the wrong to reach for. And he _wants_ it.

“Good,” Napoleon says, putting more pressure on him somehow without going deeper, and Illya _trembles._

The pace Napoleon sets is _maddeningly_ slow, a literal push and pull that has Illya twitching to meet him. His fingers swirl and push and press until Illya has a layer of sweat clinging to his whole body and his breath comes only in sharp pants.

It’s only two fingers, he thinks once, in delirious disbelief. How will it feel to have _more?_ Even spreading his fingers, as Illya can occasionally tell that Napoleon is doing, they are not as thick as-…

As though he has heard his thoughts, and as though the room has not been filled only by the sound of Illya’s ragged breathing for the last ten minutes, Napoleon suddenly asks: “And my cock, would you still like that inside of you?”

Napoleon still sounds as though he is asking about the weather, and Illya is overcome by it. The question seems to mute him, to wipe his brain entirely clear. He can’t answer; only pants as his cock throbs and leaks.

Napoleon stops moving inside him.

Illya growls furiously.

“Answer me,” Napoleon demands.

They are both completely still for several long moments, Napoleon's fingers as deep as they will go inside of him. And Illya knows with absolute certainty and not a small amount of horror that he _will_ say it, but he still fights to suppress it as it builds steadily within him, grows larger and larger until…

“Yes, I _want_ it,” he bites out, furious with himself for what he is saying. “Is that what you want to hear? I want you to _fuck_ me, Cowboy.”

The words are deceptively easy to say, and for a moment he is struck with horror at how completely he means them. He is also nearly instantaneously struck by the realization that he has not checked the room for bugs. Is his sickening admission already scorched into some tape at the KGB or CIA?

Then Napoleon’s teeth close on his shoulder.

“I won’t survive you, Peril,” he gasps. “I won’t.”

Napoleon does not sound unaffected any longer.

“And I will die of old age at your pace,” Illya bites back, though his uneven breath robs it of most its bite.

Napoleon chuckles softly. “Eager, are you?”

Illya has two of Napoleon’s fingers inside of his body and it has brought him a sensation he has not felt in years: vulnerability. Napoleon could hurt him too easily, he realizes, the taunt being a stark reminder.

Yet, the fury with himself for losing his head so easily has barely begun to simmer when Napoleon suddenly admits:

“Me too.”

The words are barely a breath, and they do not sound like something Napoleon would say. They are too soft, too keen, too like something someone with little experience with what he is about to do would say.

Illya almost wants to fight to keep it, but he feels the rage slipping out of his grasp. Feels himself submitting once more.

He better at hand-to-hand, he reasons; he will beat Napoleon if he has to.

Napoleon withdraws his fingers, and it is an uncomfortable sensation after them having been still for so long. It also leaves him uncomfortably empty, and he grunts at the sensation. He feels Napoleon’s body slide across his, his knees settle down into the mattress on either side of Illya’s own, and finally his hands on Illya’s hips.

“Up,” Napoleon urges.

Illya does as told, then startles as he feels Napoleon’s cock brush against his ass. It leaves a wet smear of what he assumes is pre-come on his left cheek.

“There’s still time to back off, you know,” Napoleon offers.

He is not condescending as he says it, Illya thinks, and neither is he gentle. It is… merely a statement. There _is_ still time.

Except there isn’t.

“No,” Illya disagrees impatiently, shifting back to chase contact. “I want you now.”

Napoleon’s hands close down almost bruisingly on his hips, but it does not stop Illya from managing to line up their bodies in such a way that Napoleon’s length slides against the cleft of Illya’s ass. The sensation of it is maddening, the way slicked with excess oil.

“Okay, okay,” Napoleon agrees, the words coming out on a gasp.

Hands leave his body, and he hears the sound of the bottle of oil being opened. A barely-there hum as he senses Napoleon closing his hand around his cock to slick it up. Another few moments, then the bed shifting as Napoleon does, lining up.

The blunt head of another man’s cock presses insistently against Illya’s entrance.

Then Napoleon pushes inside.

It is a breathless sensation. As in, Illya literally feels as though there is no room in him to breathe. His inhalations come short and shallow and his head spins. It hurts, a burning hurt, and the feeling of intrusion is so strong as to nearly be nauseating. And _finally_ he thinks that he feels something that seems to correspond to the profanity of the act that he is committing, because it does not feel natural that Napoleon should be where he is; Illya’s whole body seems to be in revolt and cold sweat is breaking out across his body.

It is slow and it is steady. He can feel Napoleon trembling, and that small movement is enough to bring more pain.

Napoleon is large, this much Illya had already been aware, but it takes so long for him to bottom out within him that it seems almost comical.

A punched-out noise escapes Napoleon as he does.

Illya is surprised at the rush of heat that courses through him at the sound of it; he has always made an effort to pleasure the women he has been with, and he has been pleased when their noises have been indicative of that he has succeeded. This is not that.

This is Napoleon, not only not unaffected, but _crumbling._

This is enough that it tempts him to ignore the pain to make it come again. To make Napoleon _feel_ that way again.

An involuntary twitch of his muscles at the thought of it is enough to warn him off it, though.

Their unsteady breaths fill the room.

“How are you holding up, Peril?” Napoleon asks, finally, voice slightly thin and uneven under the strain.

Illya thinks on this for a moment.

“I feel like I am dying,” he says, then, uncommonly honest.

“Hm,” Napoleon says, fingers tracing lightly over Illya’s hip. “Not exactly a rousing endorsement.” 

He does not move, though. Does not offer to pull out.

It… makes something uncomfortably like fondness spring up in Illya and take root. Makes him think, stupidly, of the times that they have been caught and bound and beaten together. Of how they have made it through, before.

It is not the same. But it is still Napoleon, so, somehow, it is.

Illya breathes deep.

“You should move now,” he tells Napoleon.

Napoleon does not hesitate: he does as told, the movement slow and steady. Illya hears him draw for air, his breath almost gulping.

It is better, somehow, to have him moving. Not just that relentless _fullness,_ nearly culminating in something claustrophobic.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Napoleon gasps suddenly, startling Illya out of his head, “Illya, if you could see this…”

Napoleon seems to have almost lost himself completely only in the course of his steady withdrawal. Illya does not have to guess at what he is referring to: the vision of his cock inside of him. It is enough to imagine the sight, Illya finds, face heating and a moan tearing at his throat.

Then Napoleon’s hand suddenly wraps around his cock and Illya loses any chance of keeping the sound contained.

Napoleon squeezes down even firmer in response, hips stuttering simultaneously.

Like a flood, pleasure suddenly crashes down upon him and drowns out everything else. He pushes his hips forward to seek more friction for his cock, only to nearly immediately rock back again to drive Napoleon further inside. Napoleon’s choked-off whine in response makes it impossible for Illya to think. He reaches back until he manages to grab the side of Napoleon’s ass in one hand and shoves him back inside. It’s too much and too soon but in a _perfect_ way, and even the pain seems only to drive the edge of it that much further.

“ _God,”_ Napoleon curses, grabbing hold in his hip in return, and starts in on a punishing pace.

Napoleon thrusts and thrusts and thrusts, and Illya slips further and further down with each until he’s suddenly laying flat on his stomach. This brings the weight of Napoleon down on him more fully, the heat and scent and _sounds_ of him, until Illya feels completely encased in him. Napoleon’s hand becomes crushed beneath them, and Illya forces his hips up until there’s enough of a gap that he can get his own arm beneath and swat Napoleon’s hand away. The sensation of his own hand on his cock in combination with how deep Napoleon has slipped with the shift of his hips nearly undoes him.

And in the moment where he holds still, trying to hold on, Napoleon plants his elbows on the side of Illya’s shoulders.

And then he fucks him.

It is deep and hard and fast, and Illya loses all hold he has on himself. His moans slip out of him barely without note, he is shameless as he pushes his hips up to meet the thrusts, his cock leaks copiously across the sheets. The fact that Napoleon’s entire body is pressed against him, is _inside_ him, is so inescapable that he feels wild with it.

Napoleon’s teeth clamp down on his neck, just below the line of his hair.

Illya comes.

He does so with a whine that he can barely recognize as his own voice, the world white and spinning, a roaring crescendo in his ears.

Napoleon’s teeth loosen, his breath coming cold against a spot made wet by his saliva.

“Oh god,” Napoleon gasps. “ _Illya-…”_

The lines of his body go taught, pressed as close as he could conceivably be, hips snapping crushingly against him, once, twice, three times. It extends Illya’s own orgasm to an almost excruciating degree, a relentless cresting that pushes tears to his eyes.

He comes down panting and wrung out. It feels as though he is floating.

Napoleon gets an arm underneath his shoulder and holds him close, nearly an embrace, and places idle kisses between his shoulder blades. For several long moments, Illya’s mind is too wiped blank to think.

Then, he tenses.

Napoleon stops, mid-movement, lips just barely grazing Illya’s skin.

Then he lifts his head, pulls out, and rolls off.

Illya feels too light and too empty. And wet. He feels wet.

He reaches back to feel his hole, puffy and sticky with semen. _Napoleon’s._ He removes his hand, wipes it carelessly against the sheets before bunching them up and pushing them down to be rid of the wet spot; they had not pulled down the covers as they had fallen into bed. He settles down against the clean sheets still on his stomach, looks up, and finds Napoleon propped up on his elbow and watching him.

Illya raises his eyebrows in question.

Napoleon looks away.

Then he lays down, also on his stomach. He turns his head so that he faces away from Illya.

Napoleon’s back glitters in the golden lamplight. Illya lays in silence and watches it for some time.

Then he mutters, words half-swallowed by the pillow: “You have glass in your back,”

Napoleon lifts his head from the pillow to turn around and look at him.

“And whose fault is that?” he asks, lips quirking slightly upwards.

“I did not ask you to put fist in mirror,” Illya points out, but gets up on his elbows anyway.

He leans over Napoleon's back and begins pulling the shards out with his fingers. It’s a slow process, finding the grip without cutting himself. When he has removed all that he can see, he drags his fingers gently across Napoleon’s back to find any remaining invisible slivers, mindful so as not to drive them any deeper.

When he is done, he lays his palm flat between the protrusion of the shoulder blades.

“Hmm,” Napoleon sighs, as though the process had been relaxing to him. Then he adds: “But you did throw me out of a bathtub.”

Illya places a fingertip lightly against the largest of the red marks instead of admitting guilt. Then he lays back down. He thinks that he would have liked to put his lips against the marred skin, but that it would not have been allowed now that they are no longer having sex.

A more severe transgression, in some ways, than what they just did.

Napoleon looks at him, amusement remaining on his lips. And Illya thinks of all the words he knows – in several languages – to describe a man such as he now knows Napoleon to be. He had thought of them earlier, looking down at him on the bathroom floor, but had thought them inaccurate then.

And yet they still feel as ill-fitting. 

Another word appears in his mind, unbidden. He shakes it away, firmly. The other words, for all their harshness, seem easier to handle than that one, and so he returns to them.

Decides to try out the one that did not suit Napoleon on himself.

“I am a homosexual, then,” he says.

He flinches because his voice sounds horribly loud saying those words.

The smile falls from Napoleon’s face. He finds himself having the thought that Napoleon will surely flee his presence now, now that he has been made aware of his perversion. It is irrational, Illya is aware, because obviously Napoleon does already know; he has only just finished indulging him in it. But Illya cannot seem to shake it.

The silence is like waiting for the hangman’s ax.

Napoleon gets up on his elbows again and peers down at him.

“I suppose you might be,” he allows, finally.

Illya does not know what to do with this answer.

“You suppose?” he probes, an eyebrow raised, because Illya has Napoleon’s semen in his ass and the taste of his cock lingering in his mouth, and how much further does one need to go to dispose of the _‘suppose’_ and the _‘might’_?

Napoleon shrugs, the movement careful.

“It is a rather ugly word, I find.”

Illya agrees. But there are many ugly words that can describe him with accuracy.

Napoleon keeps watching him for several long moments. Then sigh heavily.

“Is this where your famous Soviet morals finally catch up with you?” he wonders.

Illya frowns at him.

“Do I need to dive for that gun on the floor?” he elaborates with a nod in the direction of the discarded weapon.

Illya does not think it is a particularly good elaboration, because he still does not understand.

“I suppose that if you want to shoot me now, then-“

“ _No_ , Peril, Jesus!” Napoleon interrupts, plainly frustrated. “I’m _not_ going to shoot you!”

Napoleon collapses back into the bed, this time rolled over so that he is on his back.

Illya does not understand what has made him so upset.

“This is what you use gun for,” he points out. “Shooting people.”

Napoleon looks at him, mouth flat. “You’re the trigger-happy one, Peril.”

Illya frowns. “I will not shoot you.”

Napoleon actually seems mildly surprised at this. “Is that so?”

Illya frowns deeper. “Do you make habit of having sex with people you suspect will attempt killing you?”

Napoleon barks a laugh. “It’s practically in the job description.”

Illya looks at him. At his tousled hair, the scrapes of red along his jaw, his swollen lips.

“And this,” he asks. “Is this in job description?”

Napoleon's eyes are dark when they turn to him. The gun might be on the floor, but the tired lines the American had recited had been truth: Illya has brought the consequences down upon himself. Better Napoleon, and that he does it cleanly, than someone else. The gun might be the kindness.

He does not want to end up like his father.

Suddenly Napoleon shifts, rolls to his side and his body ends up a mere inch from Illya’s. It is silly that it should matter, after how close they have just been, but Illya feels the skin on his arms rise into bumps. It feels as though his body is trying to reach for Napoleon’s in any way it can when Illya himself refuses to let it.

“This,” Napoleon says, his hand coming up to brush against his cheekbones. “Was stupidity.”

The touch feels alarming. He does not know what it means, to be touched like this by another man’s hand – it is not sexual and it is not violent, and he has been told that there are no other alternatives.

“This,” Napoleon says, and he is so close now that his breath ghosts across Illya’s lips with the word. “Was a lack of self-restraint.”

Illya can see Napoleon waiting, holding himself still above him. He does not know what he waits _for._

After a few seconds, he gives up. Withdraws with a familiar self-deprecating smile on his lips.

“I have always been bad at denying myself beautiful things,” Napoleon says, tone easy and matter-of-fact, his fingers and eyes dancing briefly over Illya’s abdominal muscles. “A thief in all things.”

He pulls his hand back and his smile has soured.

Illya catches his wrist before it is gone. “You have taken nothing that I did not give.”

“Ah, but do you really know that?” Napoleon asks, like Illya has missed something, like he does when he thinks that Illya does not perceive the true depth of a piece of art that they are looking at.

But Illya _is_ looking. Seeing curled hair and blue eyes and lips that he wants to kiss. Is out of his depth but have lost all desire to find his way back to shore; there is nothing he would not give.

Many words, only one fitting – only the one that should not be able to.

“Yes, Cowboy,” he says. “I do know.”

Napoleon’s face goes serious in a way that Illya rarely sees it. Then he leans forward and presses his lips against Illya’s.

Illya’s heart hammers like a drum in his chest, but he keeps still because it feels like a test. And it still feels like a test when Napoleon pulls back, but only the fraction of an inch that is required for him to part his lips, for his tongue to be there and for it to be made wet. It is not like earlier; it is soft and plush and slow. Illya feels like he can hardly breathe.

“I don’t _just_ want to have sex with you, Illya,” Napoleon says, like a warning, pulling away.

The possibilities flutter past in Illya’s mind, each too fast to linger on, but all of them seem improbable.

“We have had sex already,” he points out.

“Yes,” Napoleon agrees patiently. “I would like to do so again. Often, if at all possible.”

That… is more than Illya had dared hope for. And as he looks up at Napoleon’s wary eyes, he suddenly understands. The proverbial ground beneath his feet has gone liquid and the earth itself seems to have been upended, but he understands.

“Yes,” he says then, and reaches out and pulls Napoleon back down.

Napoleon’s surprised sound is squashed between their lips. Illya is not careful enough, always a brute, but Napoleon is not fragile and so he holds him even tighter and kisses even harder.

“Wait,” Napoleon gasps out in the moments they part. “Wait, you’re not listening- I- _Illya.”_

He sounds annoyed that he does not let him up enough to finish the sentence. That he is not taking him seriously and that he will not listen. But _Illya_ is annoyed that Napoleon still thinks that there is need for words, that _he_ is not taking him seriously.

“ _You_ are the one not listening, Cowboy,” he growls against his lips. “I am saying _yes_.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This was not supposed to have any sex in it.


End file.
